RESEARCH ARTICLE
Study of an Optimum Design Method for Links
Shujun Hu*, 1, Zhan Wang2
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2014Volume: 8
First Page: 335
Last Page: 343
Publisher ID: TOCIEJ-8-335
DOI: 10.2174/1874149501408010335
Article History:
Received Date: 23/7/2014Revision Received Date: 7/8/2014
Acceptance Date: 8/8/2014
Electronic publication date: 30/12/2014
Collection year: 2014
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Under severe earthquakes, eccentrically braced frames might experience large inelastic deformations, and the inelastic action is restricted primarily to the ductile links. In order to study the reasonable design method for links, seventy analyses of links are conducted to investigate the effect of different flange width-thickness ratio and length, fifty links are also designed to study the influence of stiffeners spacing, stiffeners thickness and placing on side(s), and thirty-six links are designed to consider the effect of axial loads, which are all based on the material properties of Q235 steel. The accuracy of finite element models is verified using the experimental data during cyclic loading. Numerical analysis results show that the flange width-thickness ratio of short and long links can be relaxed to 10√235/fy , and stiffeners can only be placed on one side. However, the flange width-thickness ratio of intermediate links is limited to 8√235/fy , and stiffeners should be placed on both sides due to the unstable behavior. Stiffener thickness has no significant influence on the performance of links with varying length. Unlike short links, intermediate and long links are susceptible to the axial forces. Then an optimum design method is proposed by analyzing the main influencing factors, so links can have good ductility and stiffness at high load levels.
